WELCOME to the Official Blog of the 2012 Master National Hunting Test, October 18-28, brought to you by the Retriever News and written by Tina Styan & Gwen Jones. We hope you enjoy these daily updates on the 2012 Master National, held this year in and around Demopolis, Alabama.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Day Five of the Master National

It seems as each day of this event goes by, it gets a few degrees warmer. Flight A went into their third series with 89 dogs. As we stopped by the test, Flight A, was just finishing up "Butterfly Slots" in the late afternoon. They are so far ahead of everyone else at this point, that they decided to give everyone a break from the afternoon sun and start their next test, "Give Me A Brake," tomorrow. It was overheard by this roving reporter that the Judges stated that they had lost a lot of good dogs today. Let's hope not, though.

It takes a well-oiled crew to break down and set-up a test and we have seen this group do it twice now with efficiency and expediency. Callbacks to come...

Flight B moved from "Give Me A Brake" to "Oh No, Mr. Bill" mid afternoon. With 98 out of 114 dogs called back to this third test, we expect they will be in this same location for this afternoon and all of tomorrow...possibly into Friday morning. The water marks in this test were a welcome relief for the dogs in the hot afternoon sun.

Flight C started their third test at "Double Trouble" and Flight D went to "Give Me A Brake."
We will visit them tomorrow for updates...